The story of German occupancy of Belgium and France is a long, black story of unspeakable crimes. These brigands broke into banks, looted factories, pillaged houses, burned the farmers' machinery, chopped down orchards and vineyards. In the face of their newly-signed treaties with the Allied nations, pledging the safeguarding of all buildings dedicated to education and religion, with the lives and property of non-combatants, the Germans made their treaties mere scraps of paper, sneered at the most solemn obligations given by men to men, burned cathedrals, colleges and libraries, mutilated old men and women, violated little children, nailed a child to a farmer's barn door upon which they found a calf skin drying in the sun, and beneath wrote the word "zwei." They crucified Canadian officers and Roman Catholic nuns. They bombed hospitals and Red Cross buildings. They thrust women and little children between themselves and the Belgian and French soldiers defending their native land. The affidavits, photographs, and mutilated bodies are witnesses that destroy forever the last shred of doubt and incredulity. For men who are open to testimony, the German atrocities are more surely established than any of the hideous cruelties recorded in history. Now, for the first time, wildest savagery has been reduced to a science, and damned into existence under the name of German efficiency. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE GERMAN ATROCITIES At the beginning of the war the American people questioned all these alleged horrors, saying that all war is hell, and abuses are common to all armies. Americans looked upon these alleged abominations as being intellectually absurd and morally monstrous, and therefore we doubted the evidence. But at last all alike perceive that the German war-deeds differ from the usual abuses of war, as a cunning fiend differs from a drunken man. Germany believes in militarism, in forty-two centimeter guns, in submarines, in liquid fire and poisoned gases. This republic and our Allies believe in the manufacture of souls of good quality. We believe in schools, colleges, libraries, churches, factories, banks, fruitful fields and a self-sufficing, intelligent and moral manhood. From the Allied view-point, the very thought of Germany's asking other nations to produce property while once in a generation, with her standing army, she goes forth to pillage and loot the wealth that industrious French or Belgians have created, is for us a monstrous thought. From the German view-point, however, atrocities represent military efficiency. Just as the German War Staff perfected in advance rifles and cannon as legitimate warfare, so they prepared in advance certain outrages from which they expected the greatest possible results, in terms of conquered territory. THE GERMAN HANDBOOK OF MILITARY TACTICS